HOW I USE COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

This week I am supposed to write about how I use new communication technologies to communicate with my friends and family.This is an interesting sbject for me, since all my best friends and my family live in Brazil, and therefore I depend on technology communication to talk to them. New communication technology makes part of my life. Every day when I sit in front of the computer I check my e-mail. After that I go straight to my orkut. Most of the Australians probably do not know what an orkut is, and I will try to explain briefly. It is an on-line community that connect people thru your friends. Only invited people are allowed to join. Once you accept the invitation, you create your orkut page. There you can write about yourself, you can post photos, join communities and do lots of other stuff. But I what I most use it for is to talk to people. It is really hard to explain it if you never used it. If someone wants to know more abot orkut or join it let me know and I can help you.
And all the time I am connected to the internet, I am on-line on the MSN messenger. Right know while I am typing, I am talking to a friend of mine in Brazil. I have the audio on, so I do not have to type, and we have te cameras on, so we can see each other.
Another technology that helps me a lot is the skype or the voip. With that I can call overseas for a really cheap price. I use it every to talk to my friends and family.
Without the communication technologies I mentioned above I would not be able to talk to everyone in Brazil so often because the telephone bills would be to expensive, I would not be able to get written communication instantly (thru the post itwoud take ages), and I would not be able to see them thru a web cam. So I am really happy about the new communication technologies!

Week 2

In the second week of lecture we had a little bit about the history of technology of communication. We saw the explosion of mass communications an dlearned about Ferdinand de Saussure. We learned about the communication studies in USA, about minimun, mixed and maximum effects. We went thru the media studies in UK, where the part about the moral panics caught my attention, because it is an important issue that will always exist while the media is there. And we also had a look in the culture studies in Europe.But the best part of the lecture from far was the movie "La Jetee". This movie came with the explosion of the French cinema, that used simple methods to make their movies, and combined them with complex stories.. "La Jetee" is about the almost extinction of the human beeing, where the only ones left where hidden in the underground. Hopping to find something that would allow the repopulation of humans in the earths surface, random people where chosen to go thru painfull experiments to visit the past. From there a chllenging story follows. The end is exceptionally surprising. Ironically "La Jetee", that was supposed to overcome the hegemony and non creativity of the Hollywood movies, was also used as basis for the famous Hollywood movie "The Twelve Monkeys".

Week 1 Tutorial 10 to 12

In todays tutorial I opened my own blog. I am supposed to post around 300 words every week, writing about what I learned and did. Today is my first day in this tutorial. When I was opening my blog my e-mail address was already beeing used for a blog, and I did not know the password. I had to give my e-mail address, and create a new password.

Everyone in the class had to talk a little bit about themselves. I am not the only one that does not now yet what to do after finishing University. There is another international student in the class, and a guy doing psychology. Most people are doing communication and journalism.

I am taking this class because the technology is changing the world. It is influencing people and their behavior and social relations. Now a days people do not have to see each other that much anymore, because they have other communication options. Getting to know and umderstanding them is important. And it helps to understand and predict the future of our world.

So I hope I can get the most out of this class, learn as much as possible, and finish the semester more familiar with the communication technologies from today.